Case Study
It paid for itself in year one — out of stock they had already bought
Government-funded non-profit health authority
Medical supplies, medications, equipment and PPE across 27 facilities and more than 200 defined storage locations — with better utilization of stock already purchased, less waste, and an end to over-ordering
Key findings
- In the first year, the savings already covered what the health authority spent on the platform.
- More than 200 defined storage locations across 27 facilities, on a single inventory record.
- Before recommending a purchase, the system checks stock elsewhere in the network and items nearing expiry — and recommends a transfer instead.
- PeopleSoft stays. Tansi integrates with it rather than replacing it.
- One campaign goes to every location, each replies with what it needs, and the orders are raised straight from the responses.
Overview
The client is a government-funded non-profit health authority delivering services across a network that is not in one place. Some facilities sit in cities. Some are in remote communities. Some are reachable only by air.
The network runs to 27 facilities — two central warehouses, five regional offices, eight nursing stations, ten health centers and two additional sites — and within them more than 200 defined storage locations holding thousands of line items: medical supplies, medications, equipment and PPE.
The furthest nursing station is 1,115 miles from the central warehouse, so a correction is never quick and never cheap.
Before Tansi, that was managed with spreadsheets, paper, and an ERP system that could not handle inventory properly. Stock position was established by counting everything once a month. Between counts, nobody could say with confidence what was where.
What it saved
In the first year, the savings already covered what the health authority spent on the platform. It did not take a multi-year business case to get there, and none of it came from cutting service.
It came from three places, all of them money that was previously going out of the door without anybody being able to see it happen.
The cheapest purchase is the one you never make. Every transfer the system recommends in place of an order is stock the authority had already paid for, put to use rather than replaced — and every item used before its expiry date is value recovered from a purchase that had already happened.
For a funded organization that argument lands twice: the operating budget goes further, and the money that is spent can be shown to have been spent on something that got used.
Requirement one: one inventory across a network that is not in one place
A distributed health service has a specific inventory problem: the consequences of getting it wrong are not evenly distributed. A shortage at a city facility is an inconvenience. The same shortage at a remote nursing station is a service failure that cannot be fixed that afternoon at any price.
That makes visibility across the whole network the foundation, not a reporting nicety. Tansi holds every one of the 200+ storage locations as a defined place with its own stock position, inside one record that everybody works from — warehouse staff, regional offices, nursing stations and health centers alike.
What it holds
- Medical supplies and consumables
- Medications, with lot and expiry tracking
- Equipment, with its service history and condition
- PPE
Because the same platform holds assets as well as consumables, a piece of equipment and the supplies it consumes sit in the same system rather than in two.
Requirement two: ordering that starts with what you already have
Most replenishment logic asks one question: has this fallen below its reorder point? That produces a purchase order, which is the most expensive way to solve the problem and the slowest to arrive.
Tansi asks a longer question before it recommends anything. It looks at current stock at that location, at consumption — the actual rate at which the item is being used there — at surplus stock sitting at other locations in the network, and at items approaching their expiry date.
When the network is already holding what a location needs — particularly if it is approaching expiry somewhere else — the system recommends a transfer rather than a purchase. Product already paid for gets used instead of written off, and the purchase order is never raised.
That single behavior is the difference between an inventory system and a supply chain system. It is also the one that a funder understands immediately: you stopped buying things you already owned, and you stopped throwing away things you had already paid for.
The rest of the chain
- Requests and requisitions raised by the people who need the stock
- Purchase orders raised, approved and tracked through to receipt
- Transfers between warehouses, regional offices and service points
- Min and max levels and reorder points set per location, not globally
Requirement three: the finance system stays where it is
The client runs PeopleSoft. It was never going anywhere, and replacing it was never on the table — nor should it have been. The problem was never the finance system. The problem was that a finance system is not an inventory system, and asking it to be one had not worked.
Tansi integrates with PeopleSoft rather than displacing it. The operational layer holds what is where, what was consumed, what moved and what was received. The finance system keeps doing what it is good at.
And the vendors are in it too
A vendor upload portal lets suppliers submit shipping documents, acknowledgements and invoices directly, so the paperwork that normally arrives by email and gets filed by hand lands attached to the order it belongs to.
Requirement four: warehouse work that produces numbers you can trust
Two central warehouses supply the entire network. Everything downstream depends on their accuracy, and accuracy is a function of the discipline at receiving, picking and counting — not of the software.
Tansi runs those operations: receiving against the purchase order, picking against the request, transfers out to sites, and stock counts that update the record rather than replacing it once a month.
Requirement five: asking every location what it needs, then ordering from the answers
Consumption history is a good guide to steady demand. It is a poor guide to demand that has not happened yet. Flu season is the obvious case: what a location will need in six weeks is not visible in what it used last month, and the people who know are the people at that location.
Tansi sends a campaign across the whole network at once. Every location receives the same set of questions — what will you need, how much, anything we should know — and replies in the same structure.
That last point is the one that matters. The responses are not a spreadsheet somebody then retypes into a requisition. Ordering happens from the responses themselves, so the thing a location asked for is the thing that gets ordered — with no transcription step in between to introduce an error or a delay.
It also gives the health authority a forward view it did not previously have. Instead of reacting to consumption after the fact, it can see what the network expects to need, compare it against what the network already holds, and decide what to transfer and what to buy.
Results at a glance
| Area | Requirement | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Make the operating budget go further | First-year savings covered the cost of the platform — from better utilization of stock already purchased, reduced waste and an end to over-ordering |
| Visibility | Know what is where, across the whole network | 200+ defined storage locations across 27 facilities on one inventory record |
| Ordering | Stop over-ordering and under-ordering | Recommendations driven by current stock and actual consumption at each location, not by a fixed monthly cycle |
| Product utilization | Get the value out of what has been bought | Near-expiry items surfaced across the network and recommended for transfer, so stock is used rather than written off — better utilization of product already paid for |
| Waste | Stop paying twice | Transfers recommended in place of purchases where the network already holds the item |
| Finance system | Keep PeopleSoft | Integrated, not replaced. Vendor portal for shipping documents, acknowledgements and invoices |
| Warehouse | Numbers that hold up | Receiving, picking, transfers and counts recorded as they happen. Warehouse time increased; stock accuracy and reconciliation accuracy increased further |
| Prior systems | Replace what was not working | Spreadsheets, paper and an ERP inventory module that could not do the job |
| Campaigns | Capture demand the history cannot show | One campaign across every location, structured responses with supplies and comments, and stock ordered directly from the replies |
What this means for public sector organizations
Any organization distributing physical goods across sites it does not sit in has this problem. A health authority is the sharpest version because of how far the goods travel and how badly a shortage lands, but the structure is the same in a school district storing supplies across campuses, a public works department with parts across yards, or an emergency service holding consumables across stations.
Distance changes the cost of being wrong
At 1,115 miles, with the last leg by air, a shortage cannot be corrected the same day and a surplus cannot be quietly redistributed. Resupply is measured in days and charged by the kilogram. Visibility across the network is what makes it possible to fix either one while it is still a scheduling question rather than an emergency.
Your ERP is probably not the problem
Finance systems are asked to manage inventory because they are already there. They are good at money and poor at physical goods across many locations. Adding an operational layer alongside is faster, cheaper and less disruptive than replacing a finance system that works.
The cheapest purchase is the one you do not make
Most replenishment logic cannot see across locations, so it buys. Checking the network first — and prioritizing stock that is about to expire — converts written-off inventory into used inventory without spending anything.
Expect the work to move, not vanish
Doing this properly takes more warehouse time, not less. What it removes is the invisible work: chasing missing items, raising emergency orders and rebuilding the position at month end. Any vendor promising less effort and better accuracy at the same time is describing something other than inventory management.
About Tansi
Tansi is the operational layer traditional ERP systems were never built to cover. Built continuously since 2015, it is a single system for the work that happens between corporate reporting and the field: assets and inventory, supply chain and warehouse, workforce and contractor management, training and scheduling, digital forms and inspections, mass communications, and compliance reporting.
Organizations deploy the full platform or individual modules alongside an ERP they already own — in days, not quarters. Support is handled entirely in-house. Calls are answered by a live person in the United States and go directly to the people who build and maintain the platform.
Tansi LLC is US-incorporated. Client data and backups are held in US data centers, and Tansi has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit.
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